Lottie Ryan opens up on moment she learned her dad Gerry Ryan had died
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Lottie Ryan has opened about the moment she found out her dad, legendary broadcaster Gerry Ryan, had died.
Marking the 15th anniversary of the RTE 2FM star's passing, Ms Ryan appeared on tonight's Late Late Show for an emotional interview with host Patrick Kielty.
Discussing the day Gerry Ryan died in 2010, she said: "I was actually at home that day. I don't know if I was skipping college on purpose or what I was doing, but I was at home with my brother.
"He didn't go on air that morning and I was listening and I tried to ring him, and he would never not answer the phone to me, and he didn't answer the phone.
"So I kind of thought, oh, maybe he's not well. I left it for about 20 minutes, and when he didn't call me back, I went to call him again, and I was like, that's really weird that he wouldn't answer a second time.
"So I started texting him, and wasn't getting anything. And then I think a couple of hours later, maybe around midday, the doorbell rang. And I think a lot of people say this when they have somebody really close to them that's passed away.
"There's something in you that just knows something's happened. You just, I don't know what it is, but I just knew something. Then I walked downstairs and our GP was at the front door, and I opened the door, and I just instantly, I was like, 'where is he?'.
"You know, obviously it took me a while to process. I thought maybe he was in hospital where I knew he was under a lot of stress, and I thought maybe he had just had a heart attack. But obviously it was worse than that, but something in you just knows. I mean so many people who lose someone, the pain and the intensity of that is something so hard."
Ms Ryan also opened up about the difficulty of dealing with grief in the public eye. "I feel we were kind of locked up in the house for quite a while, like you couldn't really go out for a walk to get some fresh air, or you kind of felt like everyone was staring at you all the time and expecting you to be crying constantly," she said.
"So, you know, one of the big things with grief is the first morning you wake up and they're not the first thing on your mind you feel guilty about. So it kind of felt like that constantly. Was like people were watching you, waiting to see you get upset and that's really difficult. So it prolonged the process, I think, and I think it's probably deeply affected all of us, but we are a really tight knit family."
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